


and rest a while for many

by spacenarwhal



Series: second star to the right and straight on [3]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, F/M, Future Fic, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Mental Health Issues, Kid Fic, M/M, Team as Family, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-28 14:40:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10118411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacenarwhal/pseuds/spacenarwhal
Summary: Bodhi takes his place at Cassian’s side, Baze stands at Jyn’s, and when Chirrut asks who accompanies Cassian for the rite, Bodhi steps forward, unable to keep his face from exploding into a smile when he says, “I do.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is all the has kept me sane for the last week

Saachi was born the year before he was conscripted. In Bodhi’s memories of her she’s more often than not soft and squishy still, an infant full of shrill squawking noises, smelling of milk and the faintly floral scented talc powder his mother would dust her with after changing her.

By the time he left—Bodhi enlists as willingly as a page of papyrus burns, without any real say in the matter once fire’s caught hold—she was a chubby toddler capable of lumbering around at will, black hair perpetually standing in cowlicks about her round head, teeth constantly erupting from her inflamed gums, determinedly gnawing on anything that would allow itself to be pulled into her mouth.

His parent’s first daughter after years of keeping a house full of boys. Bodhi’s sister. _Almas_ , they used to call her, bumping two knuckles under her soft chin, the favorite of the house. Bodhi used to think of how unfair it was that she had been born to a Jehda that was everyday more and more constricting, the Empire tightening it’s hold bit by bit until there was no other way to breath but by doing as was ordered. His mother used to say that was what made her a double blessing, someone to remind them all of every reason there was to never relinquish what good there was in the galaxy. “No Emperor or army can take it from us.” She said, and Bodhi, who was barely more than a child himself, whip-cord thin and always half-furious at the state of things, nodded as though he believed her. 

(That had been before. Before the mines were shut. Before the academies were closed and the libraries were ransacked. Before the Temple doors barred and its guardians cast out in to the streets. Those who didn’t fall defending it. Before neighbors began disappearing—first at night and then in broad daylight—before rebels were being marched through the streets, hands bound before them, under the shadow of the Imperial flag. Before he heard his parents whispering in hushed voiced over rumors of how little food there was in the city. Before Adil, the eldest, the constant of Bodhi’s life, died buried in a mine shaft trying to extract kyber from beneath the earth. Before Rigel, hot-headed Rigel used to chase Bodhi through the house and tell the best ghost stories to the eternal dismay of their mother, left in the middle of the night and never returned home. Before his father took Bodhi’s face in his rough hands and told Bodhi he didn’t have to go and Bodhi shook his head and said it was his choice. “It is not a choice if it the only option available to you.” His father said bitterly, face gaunt from more than a lack of food.)

When he left Bodhi took with him three holos of his family. One of his mother and father on their wedding day, one with almost everybody else—aunts, uncles, cousins, two grandmothers and one grandfather and great Uncle Rafe who wasn’t really related to anyone but had always been _there_ —and one of Saachi, almost one year old, covered in vegetable mush. He’d made sure to take them when he ran, hadn’t wanted to leave them behind for the ‘troopers when his measly possessions were inevitably ransacked after his defection was uncovered, only to lose them when Saw’s rebels stripped him of everything in the caves outside Jedha city. 

He has to stop for a moment, think carefully about how old Saachi would be now. The last time Bodhi saw her she’d been a little more than four, a mousy shadow at his mother’s heels, hiding her face in Um’s skirts whenever Bodhi tried to speak to her. She hadn’t recognized him at all by then. 

If she were to appear before him today, he thinks for the hundredth, the thousandth, the millionth time since the Death Star tore through Jedha’s sky and turned the city to ash and dust, _his family_ , he wouldn’t recognize her either. To Bodhi she’ll always be that infant, the treasure of their home. A memory like all the rest of them.

“You’ve gone somewhere far away.” Chirrut says, joining Bodhi on the low bench that seems to have grown right out of the hillside at the far edge of the garden. Baze’s garden. Bodhi studies the neatly segmented flowerbeds, the dark soil and the greenery sprouting up all over. The scents of herbs and flowers are carried towards him on today’s mild breeze, sweet and clean. He imagines, almost against his will, Baze wearing his Aunt Akilah’s oversized gardening hat, it’s floppy rim shading his face and her old weatherworn gloves pulled up over his wrists, attending his garden with the same look of utmost concentration that he used to wear while dismantling his old ion canon. It makes Bodhi grin. 

“No,” Bodhi answers, tipping his head skyward, towards the warm yellow sun overhead. “I’m right here.” 

Chirrut taps his staff against the soft earth between his feet. “Long ago then.” He says, and Bodhi tears his eyes away from the small brightly colored birds headed west, looks back at Chirrut, studies his lined face and calm eyes, wonders that he has so much more white to his hair now than he does in Bodhi’s memory of him. Chirrut doesn’t appear bothered by Bodhi’s overlong silence, still as familiar and at ease with the slippery uncooperative bits of Bodhi’s brain as ever, as though they haven’t been apart more than a week, rather than nearly a year. He’s missed Chirrut just as he’s has missed all of them, very much. (He misses Chirrut’s patience and Baze’s steadiness and Cassian’s constancy and Jyn’s determination. He even misses Kay’s insubordination from the co-pilot seat. It’s a secret that he holds inside himself, quiet and small, a longing to go back to a time before the war was officially declared over, to have them all back together again.)

“Yes,” Bodhi finally answers, turning the answer over in his head, “A very long time ago.” Another life really. Before the Empire. The Rebellion. The war. Back to a life that seems to run parallel to his own but will never truly touch the one he has now. 

He wonders if the others ever feel this way, glancing out at the garden again, the small home just beyond it. He wonders if Baze and Chirrut ever sit out here and wonder if Jedha was ever real. Bodhi wonders if they ever miss cursing the sand that had to be shaken from their boots every night or reminisce about the way a desert night could chill the air in your lungs as quickly as any night on Hoth. Bodhi wonders if they ever stretched out over the sun-warmed stone steps of the city square as children and watched the people come and go, if they had ever imagined living the rest of their lives just like that, beneath Jedha’s sun and among those streets that seemed to have always existed. 

Chirrut’s aged hand covers Bodhi’s where it rests on his lap, the strength of his fingers firm, guiding Bodhi back from the whirlpool’s edge of memory. He doesn’t ask Bodhi any more about where he’s gone, reassuring in his presence alone. They used to sit together, back on Yavin, on Hoth, on countless other rebel bases, until Bodhi learned how to sit with himself again, how to calm the melee of thought and memory that seemed constantly at work in the wake of Saw’s creature.

It happens less often now. And while the edges don’t ever lay quite smooth and probably never will again, but he’s begun to understand that he is still Bodhi inside the seams, still here no matter what might be missing.

“You’re doing impressive work from the sound of it.” Chirrut says, carrying them over to a new subject. Age isn’t slowing him down any, still able to read the whirling winds of Bodhi’s thoughts, even when Bodhi isn’t sure of where they’ll blow himself. “Baze and I follow the news coming out of the core as best we can,” He offers Bodhi an encouraging grin, voice rich with pride. “But it must be different when you’re in the thick of it.”

Blood rises in Bodhi’s face and he feels humbled and proud in a single dizzying rush. His fingers fidget in his lap. He’d hoped to avoid talking about his work during this visit. (Cassian hasn’t tired of calling him Ambassador Rook yet, same delighted grin on his face as when he first heard it. It’s almost enough to make Bodhi miss the stern-faced man he first met, the one who led him out into a rainstorm on Eadu.)

“Thank you—it’s—it is different.” Bodhi says quickly, the words rushing out of him as though they were only ever waiting for the chance to escape. “I’m a pilot. I don’t—I’m not sure what the princess was thinking when she decided I could—there are so many of us, Chirrut. People the Empire’s displaced, and they’re all looking for somewhere to call home and I—” He shrugs helplessly, unsure if Chirrut can feel it in the Force or the motion that passes between their bodies. “I swear I don’t know what I’m doing half the time besides trying not to make things worse.”

He breathes out, sags over his lap and presses his palms against his eyes. All those people, survivors and orphans of the Empire’s destruction, many of them without anywhere to go. And Bodhi meant to advocate on their behalf. Help them. (“You will.” Jyn had said the night before Bodhi set out, the first time he was scheduled to speak in front of the galactic senate at Princess Leia’s request. “How?” Bodhi had asked, stomach knotted with nerves. Jyn had gripped his arm, her face full of its usual confidence when she said, “Because others need you to. And you’d never let them down.” And he knew there wasn’t any choice.)

It makes him miss the cockpit of his x-wing, the certainty of navigation, the familiarity of flight controls. He’s a pilot. He could have remained a pilot. 

Chirrut frowns, he removes his hand from Bodhi’s, resumes his tapping. It’s a dull measured rhythm that calms something in Bodhi’s gut. “That’s as good a place to start as any.” He says simply, and it isn’t the grand wisdom Bodhi was hoping for, and maybe some of his disappointment is evident in his silence because Chirrut cracks the seriousness of the moment with a sudden bark of laughter. Gone are all traces of the sage guardian, the man other soldiers whispered and awed at—“He trained Luke Skywalker. He’s the last Jedi.”— replaced instead by a cackling man, his features creased with age and happiness. He hoots under his breath, props his brow against his staff. “Your heart has never faltered Bodhi. Trust it. Trust yourself. You’ll be fine.” He says finally, before straightening again, face turned towards the garden expectantly.

“So this is where you’ve been hiding.” Comes Jyn’s voice before she appears, cutting through the flowerbeds and making her way towards them. Bodhi means to tell her that they’ve hardly been hiding but he loses track of the words, has to stare at her for a second instead, surprised by the sight of her. He can honestly say that in all the years of knowing her he’s never seen her look quite like this. 

Her boots are still the same scuffed and practical boots Jyn’s always worn, but her tunic hangs loose around her hips without a holster to cinch it, a soft shade of blue that reminds him of a moonstone. There are flowers tucked into her hair, a half crown made up of pale green and white star-shaped flowers. It isn’t anything like the elaborate dresses he’s seen on some of the beings on Coruscant at the more formal events he’s had to attend. But there’s something undeniably radiant to her, a kind of light that seems to emanate out from under her skin. Jyn Erso, as lovely as he knows her to be stubborn, and Bodhi can’t help but blink, dumbstruck. Life has such an odd way of working out. 

“You clean up nicely.” He says and means it. Jyn’s face goes pink. She smiles. “Just trying to keep up with you, Ambassador.” 

Bodhi groans, covering his face. He’ll never hear the end of it. “You two are the _worst_.”

Chirrut chuckles under his breath, rising to his feet. “That’s no way to speak to a bride, Bodhi.” Something flashes lightening quick across Jyn’s face. She raises her hand, stops short of fiddling with any of the flowers in her hair. (Bodhi remember his mother’s dark hair, a tightly braided rope that hung down to her back. He used to sit on her bed and watch her wind her hair up and over into a thick coil at the back of her head. Saachi would have had her hair, just as thick and dark and endless.)

Jyn clears her throat, hand dropping to her side. She jerks her head towards the house. “C’mon then. Kay’s been calculating our odds of messing this up again and you know how I hate to prove him right.”

Bodhi laughs outright. “I don’t really think you have to worry about _that_ happening this time.” Jyn wrinkles her nose at the memory of what should have been a wedding ten months ago. “Try telling him that.”

They fall into step beside her, back through the garden and small sparsely furnished home Baze and Chirrut keep on Takodana. This place they come back to whenever they aren’t off doing whatever it is they feel needs doing, whether its seeking out stragglers of the Empire or shepherding survivors of Jedha in his direction. Back out the front door towards the large dark-barked tree that grows there. Baze called it a serpent’s puzzle when he pointed out the knotting branches growing overhead. Bodhi’s seen something like it before, though he can’t remember where, so many different planets and moons blending into another in his memory. 

Cassian and Baze are waiting for them there, in the cool shade beneath the tree, Kay-Tu at Cassian’s shoulder and Auren in Baze’s arms. It’s been days since Bodhi’s arrived but he’s still not quite used to the sight of Baze holding a baby. Even without the armor or any visible weapons on his person Baze remains an intimidating figure, large in a way no amount of time or familiarity can diminish. Auren, who already seems far too helpless and breakable for Bodhi’s comfort, seems doubly so in Baze’s arms. But, he concedes, still intent on giving them wide berth, there’s probably few places safer than in Baze’s care. “I think she likes him better.” Cassian joked when he first caught Bodhi looking, face relaxing into an easy smile. 

He hasn’t been avoiding her outright—there is no avoiding Auren, not here, not even if he wanted to. Almost from the moment Jyn told him she was expecting Auren has been a presence in all their lives—but he likes to keep a careful distance between them. He isn’t afraid, but it’s been a long time since he’s had to look after someone so small. 

”I was starting to think you’d changed your mind.” Cassian says when Jyn reaches his side, and she tips her head back, the jut of her chin defiant as she says, “You’re stuck with me Andor.”

Auren babbles at the sight of Jyn, waves her short r arms eagerly towards her mother until Jyn lifts her up out of Baze’s grasp, presses a smacking, wet kiss to her round cheek. “Isn’t that right, Greeper?” She says fondly, kissing Auren again. “Your father’s going to have to put up with me for a very long time.” Auren squirms, delighted, bounces in Jyn’s hold, one hand reaching upward to grab at her mother’s hair. 

“Oh.” Cassian says, stepping in, taking her before she can close her curious fingers around any of the flowers there. “Let me—” Auren balks unhappily when she notices the rapidly growing distance between her and the object of her attention. Cassian holds her with her back against his chest, one arm secure under her to support her weight, one hand splayed across her abdomen. Bodhi marvels at how at ease he and Jyn seem to be now, how they’ve slipped parenthood on like a second skin, as if this is who they’ve always been. (He thinks of them, the long hours in medical or bottled up inside a ship, the fierceness with which they fight and love and defend what’s theirs. Maybe this isn’t so different from that. Another side of that strength he’s always admired in them.) “I’m up for the challenge.” Cassian says once he has Auren settled, and Jyn smiles at him, warm and fond, makes Bodhi feel like he ought to look away. 

“Are you really doing it this time?” Kay-Tu asks, and if Bodhi didn’t know better he would swear the droid sounds impatient. Jyn smiles up at him, her good mood unshaken by Kay’s rushing. “Don’t worry Kay, I can’t exactly go into labor a second time.” 

Laughter ripples through the group though Bodhi remembers very little laughter when it actually happened. Mostly there had been a lot of aimless pacing, Baze stone-still against the wall of the waiting room and Chirrut’s quiet, endless prayer, looping in the background. Even Kay had been unusually quiet after announcing to the room that the rate of women who died in childbirth was at its lowest in recent history. It had been the oddest sort of vigil Bodhi has ever kept, worry and anticipation twisting into knots in his chest right up to the moment Cassian emerged, harried and tearful, from behind a closed door to tell them Jyn and he had a daughter. 

(“She…looks like you?” Bodhi croaks when they are all finally allowed into the room. He glances between Jyn’s flushed face and Cassian’s besotted eyes, voice rising in a question though he’s mostly sure that’s the sort of thing people are expected to say when there’s a baby involved. His parents certainly heard it enough when Saachi was brought home, nothing more than a lumpy, red-faced bundle wailing her displeasure out into the world. Memory and grief open beneath his feet like a yawning chasm, a dead drop he’ll never climb out of if he falls in. Bodhi squints at the baby in front of him, takes in her patchy dark hair and oddly squished face, tries to find some semblance of either one of her parents in her features. It’s nearly impossible. But Cassian and Jyn each smile at him as though he’s paid them the best compliment they’ve heard, exhaustion and happiness bleeding out over their faces. Bodhi isn’t sure which to hold responsible for the achy, longing he feels in his gut.)

It takes a moment for them to settle, nervous energy buzzing between each and every one of them, but once they do, there’s no more reason to wait. Jyn and Cassian get married. 

Bodhi takes his place at Cassian’s side, Baze stands at Jyn’s, and when Chirrut asks who accompanies Cassian for the rite, he steps forward, unable to keep his face from exploding into a smile when he says, “I do.” 

It isn’t like any wedding Bodhi can remember attending, but he doesn’t have many to reference. There’d been a few on different bases, different traditions and different rites. He thinks this one suits Cassian and Jyn fine. Chirrut asks if they take each other willingly and they each consent, eyes fixed on one another the entire time. Cassian offers Bodhi Auren when Chirrut instructs them to take each other’s hands. 

Bodhi hasn’t been avoiding Auren but he’s still faintly terrified of holding her on his own. He isn’t sure his arms remember how to do this properly. Auren mumbles nonsensically, dribbling over her own hand as she chews it, uninterested in the events taking place around her. She settles against Bodhi’s chest and kicks her legs intermittently, until little by little Bodhi’s fear of dropping her eases into something he can tolerate. He’s able to watch Cassian and Jyn as they slip green woven bands around one another wrists and solemnly pledge their lives to another. (It’s a formality; they all know that. None of their lives have truly been their own for a long time. They each belong to one another.)

Auren smacks Bodhi in the face with a spit wet hand, breaks up the vicious emotion that threatens to envelop him when he thinks of all that’s been lost. None of it seems fair and he knows it never will. But Bodhi can look at her and know with something not unlike certainty as Auren babbles at him, revealing the two white stumps protruding from her gums—the teeth Cassian and Jyn begrudged and still informed him about excitedly when he called—that for all they’ve lost, they’ve gained each other. It isn’t an even exchange but life isn’t anything like a pile of credits. It just is. A collection of people and moments, the good and bad. The choices they make for themselves. 

Chirrut asks the Force to accompany Cassian and Jyn all the days of their lives. Then Jyn reaches for Cassian’s face and pulls him down for a kiss. Baze lets out a congratulatory holler, clapping his massive hands and Bodhi unintentionally bounces on the balls of his feet. In his arms Auren trills her approval. 

“This marriage is legally binding in exactly zero star systems.” Kay-Tu says behind Bodhi but Cassian’s too busy winding his arms around Jyn’s back, dipping her low in a theatrical show of affection that has Jyn laughing, star-shaped flowers falling out of her hair onto the dark green grass. 

“Guess we’ll just have to do it again.” Cassian replies glibly, pulling Jyn upright once more, seconds before Baze engulfs her in his arms in an embrace so fierce it lifts her off the ground. Churrit and Cassian grip each other and Bodhi stumbles over his own feet when he finds himself yanked forward into a hug, Auren carefully positioned between him and Cassian. She shrieks after a moment, though she doesn’t seem especially upset, struggling in Bodhi’s arms until Cassian takes her again. He lifts her up, raises her overhead and drops her back towards his chest, elicits another one of her high-pitched laughs. “Come here, _changuita_.” He says, positioning her on his side just before Baze comes over to congratulate him. 

“Ready for the next one?” Bodhi asks, sliding up beside Jyn. She looks flustered, her hair coming down now, her flowers all knocked askew. Her fingers drop from the kyber crystal she still wears around her neck, her eyes flicking away from Cassian and Baze. (Baze is tucking one of Jyn’s fallen flowers behind Auren’s ear. Chirrut grins almost as though he knows what’s coming, though whether it’s Auren throwing the flower in his face or the eruption of Baze’s laughter that follows is difficult to say).

Bodhi drapes his arm around her shoulder and pulls Jyn against his side. He forgets sometimes how small she is, her ability to take up space and knock a man down with the force of her will alone is still deceiving. He’s surprised when Jyn not only leans in to him but wraps both her arms around his waist. “Thank you for coming.” She says quietly and Bodhi scoffs out loud, rests his chin atop her head now that he can’t be blamed for mussing her hair. The flowers smell faintly of honey. 

“Well, I couldn’t just give Kay the satisfaction of standing in my stead.” Bodhi says, feels the laughter that shakes Jyn’s frame more than he hears it. She squeezes him hard and then pulls away. She wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand and Bodhi swallows down the urge to tell her that her father would be happy for her, this family she’s made, this life she leads. He wants to say that Auren looks like Galen, but he doesn’t know that that’s true, or if it will be. As always Galen remains a delicate subject between, one not typically broached without either injury or alcohol to precede it. He wonders if one day they might change that. There just might be time for that kind of hope. 

But today is too fair-weathered a day to invite ghosts between them, instead Bodhi chooses to kiss Jyn’s flushed cheek. “I’ll cross the galaxy for every one of these.” he says, only half joking, and Jyn smiles at him, beautiful and hard-edged as ever. 

“I’ll hold you to that, Ambassador.” 

Bodhi groans, “Just for that next time I’m going to suggest Kay stand with you.”

“He’d be honored.” Cassian says, coming up beside Jyn, who smiles so wide it makes Bodhi’s jaw ache. 

“Perhaps,” Kay-Tu says, still over by Baze and Chirrut who now have a hold of Auren, “If it were an actual wedding.” 

“Sure thing Kay, next time. Just for you.” Jyn says over her shoulder, eyes lingering on them while Cassian studies her, eyes full of the same unerring focus Jyn has always been capable of bringing out in him. Looking at them, Bodhi sends a single fervent prayer out in to the universe, a heartfelt hope that their lives be long, full, and happy. 

Later, after Auren has been laid to sleep and Baze has produced a bottle of something strong that burns all the way down Bodhi’s throat and lights a flame in his bones, they sit out in the garden, strewn across the grass, and watch the sky grow dark. Chirrut tells stories about the forming of the galaxy, though Baze interrupts with comments and corrections so frequently that Chirrut stops and prompts Baze to tell it himself. Bodhi has vague memories of his mother telling him this tale, of Adil and Rigel shouting over one another as she spoke, jostling one another atop their shared bed until it was time to sleep. He remembers sitting in the cockpit of an Imperial cargo ship and watching the stars streak by, all the while wondering if Saachi would ever see the stars with all those Destroyers cluttering Jedha’s sky. 

“My mother used to say…” Bodhi starts in a lull, the memory unclenching like a fist, finger by finger, until it’s offered up freely, eyes fixed on the sky above. The others listen.

“This is your family?” Asks a purple skinned Twi’lek who Bodhi knows as an aide of Senator Hera when she comes by the tiny room he keeps in on the outskirts of the city center. It takes him a moment to realize she’s pointing at the miniscule holo on display on his desk, all of them jostling against one another seconds after Auren loses all patience and begins to cry. Kay took it for them, all of them out beneath the serpent’s puzzle. It flickers and loops back to the beginning of the recording, everything at peace once more. He’s watched the scene repeat a hundred times in the weeks since it was taken. “Oh,” Bodhi stutters, momentarily taken aback. He opens his mouth to correct her but realizes that there’s nothing to correct. Not really. “Uh, yes, that’s—” He licks his lips, picking up the holo from his desk. The scene reaches its end again, it flickers on Chirrut’s silent laughter, “That’s them.” 

**Author's Note:**

> title from Mark 6:31
> 
> -
> 
> I just want to write a hundred stories that are like "X with baby", Baze the Baby Sitter might happen somewhere in the future, who knows


End file.
